The Molly Sutton Mystery Series, books 1-3

Chapter 11

Chapter 11Sabrina Lellouche pulled her scarf forward to hide her face as she quickly walked the last blocks before reaching the mansion of Madame Desrosiers. It was dusk on Saturday, and hardly anyone was on the streets. It was cold. She reached into her bag and drew out an old-fashioned key and let herself in through the kitchen door.

The shutters were closed and the house was dark. The heat was still on, so it was warm enough—too warm, Sabrina had always thought, but then old people probably got cold easily. She stood in the kitchen and inhaled the familiar smell of the house deep down into her lungs. It was strange to be in the house alone, but she had been going there for several years and it didn’t feel right never to come again.

She could feel the presence of the old lady. Could feel her cruelty, her invasive personality, her evil, as though she were still alive, still upstairs pondering her next act of malice.

Whoever buys this house, thought Sabrina, will be affected by what happened here. How could they not be?

She could not imagine having enough money to afford to buy such a place. Castillac was not a village that attracted many tourists or expats, and the upper layer of Castillac society was not aristocratic or even especially rich, but even so, it had a level of wealth beyond what Sabrina could comprehend. Her family had moved there from Algeria nearly fifteen years earlier and they had been barely scraping by ever since. The Desrosiers mansion with its four floors and grand foyer and blue-purple door—Sabrina thought it might fetch a million euros.

A million euros.

She put her bag down on the metal table in the kitchen where she was used to chopping Madame Desrosiers’s vegetables, and walked into the foyer. Peering upstairs, she looked for the old woman’s face at the bannister, laughing down at her.

Of course she’s not there, she’s dead.

Sabrina knew very well she was dead, but some part of her resisted the knowledge, as though she was afraid of dropping her guard. But she started up the stairs, slowly and then running, up to the second floor. She had cleaned these rooms for years, but this was the first time she walked into them standing tall, taking her time, without dragging a vacuum cleaner or bucket and mop. All of it looked different—the ornate decoration no longer a series of cleaning tasks waiting for her attention, the paintings she could look at and consider at her leisure.

She pretended she was part of the family—Madame Desrosiers’s daughter, perhaps—in the house alone, mourning for her mother. Drifting into the sitting room with the stuffed ostrich, Sabrina touched its feathers, which she hadn’t dared to do with the old lady in the house. Madame was capable of swooping in out of nowhere to shriek at you if you touched anything the wrong way.

Her footsteps creaked on the floorboards and she kept stopping to listen as though expecting the shrieking to start up any minute, or to hear the television going on the third floor. But the house was silent except for an occasional sigh from the radiators.

Madame Desrosiers had always paid Sabrina in cash. Twice a month and never missed, which was surprising in a way, considering how fond the old lady was of making people uncomfortable. Sabrina had to give her that—she paid on time. Of course, there was no knowing where the cash box was, if it was a box, but it must still be in the house, mustn’t it? Somewhere? And aside from cash, surely there were other things…of interest?

Sabrina went back to the staircase and ran up another floor up to Madame Desrosiers's bedroom. The few times she had been allowed inside the room to clean, she had seen the jewelry box on the bureau. It was long and flat and Sabrina guessed there were rare and valuable necklaces inside.

Albert Desrosiers was famous in Castillac—both for the invention of the special transistor (whose use no one understood) and especially for the river of money that the invention had sent his way. She could remember schoolmates talking about him with reverence, a local man who had gotten rich just from having a good idea! And to think, that one good idea had made this house and this jewelry box possible. It sat on madame’s dressing table, long and flat just as she remembered. Sabrina ran her hand along the velvet top. And then she took it in her hands and popped open the lid.

Inside was a string of pearls. Pretty enough, but not what Sabrina had been dreaming of. She had believed there would be diamonds, emeralds, perhaps sapphires, something with some flash. With disappointment she let the box drop back to the table, and began opening every drawer and box in Madame Desrosiers’s room that she could find, searching for the treasure she was sure the old lady had hidden there.

Sunday was warmer but dreary. “La grisaille,” Molly said to Frances, pointing outside to the gray sky. “Maybe a day to read by the woodstove? Cold rain. Yuck.”

“If I sit by the woodstove all day, I’m going to sink into a depressing heap,” said Frances. “Come on, isn’t there someplace we can go for brunch?”

“Brunch is not really a French thing.”

“Well, we could go sit at the bar at Chez Papa and stare at Nico.”

“And eat frites.”

“Now you’re talking.”

They washed up their coffee cups and put on coats and hats. Once they were outside, Molly agreed that the air felt bracing in a good way, and didn’t mind the light sprinkle of rain. It felt good to get out and breathe.

From far away they could see more traffic on rue des Chênes than usual. Cars parked on the road by the cemetery and black umbrellas were sprouting. When they got closer, they saw an old Citroën hearse pull up by the gates.

“Do you think they’re planting the old lady?” said Frances, too loudly.

Molly shot Frances a look. She scanned the people climbing out of their cars and walking under umbrellas, looking for Adèle and her brother, but didn’t see them.

The friends walked slowly, watching the hearse driver open up the back of the hearse, which was a thing of beauty, the elegant lines of the Citroën perfectly appropriate for a hearse. A few people stopped and looked in at the casket.

“I’m thinking it should say, ‘Pray for the living’,” said Frances, looking at the wrought-iron inscription over the gate. “I mean, we’re the ones who could use some help. What good will praying do when we’re already dead?”

“Hush,” said Molly. “Talk to me about it when we’re at Chez Papa.” She thought it must be the funeral for Madame Desrosiers, and she didn’t want to be distracted while she observed, just in case some sort of information dropped into her lap. She saw Rémy, the organic farmer, dressed in a dark suit, and wondered what his connection to the old lady was. And there was Pierre Gault, the mason, almost unrecognizable in a fedora and black suit. Also, the dark-haired young woman who had been at La Métairie, and her boyfriend or husband, his arm tight around her waist, just as it had been at dinner the other night.

Molly watched. She knew it was superstitious, but she had the idea that since she had found the body, she was responsible in some way for setting things right if, in fact, they were wrong. She had not even one tiny shred of evidence that anything was wrong. Desrosiers had most likely died of a heart attack, just like Dufort said.

But still.

The man with his arm around the dark-haired woman—he wasn’t doing anything, he wasn’t moving or talking, but Molly had the distinct impression that he was seething with anger. She could feel the waves of it as she stood thirty feet away.

What is he so furious about? And why was he always holding on to his wife like that, so protectively? Is he super jealous and controlling?

Then the sound of laughter came suddenly, like something alive being let out of a cage. Molly and Frances looked down the road and saw Adèle and Michel walking to the cemetery, their heads bare with no umbrella, and they were smiling and laughing as though on their way to the theater for a night of fun, almost as if they were a young couple.

Odd, thought Molly.

Don’t blame ’em, thought Frances.

“Would it be horribly rude for us to go in for the ceremony?” whispered Molly.

“You want to go to a funeral?”

“Well, this one. Yes.”

Frances looked at Molly like she had two heads. “Okay. You go ahead, enjoy yourself, you nutter. I’ll trot on ahead to Chez Papa and dive into those frites. Nico will keep me company.”

Molly nodded and Frances took off without a backward glance. Adèle and Michel saw Molly and waved as they approached.

“Bonjour, Molly,” said each of them, kissing cheeks with her.

“I was just walking into the village,” she said hesitantly.

“We’re going to our aunt’s funeral,” said Michel, grinning.

“Yes. I was wondering…would it be weird? Or impolite? I’d like to attend, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Not at all!” said Michel. Adèle stared at him but he did not notice. “We’d love your company,” he said, still grinning. He was wearing a very nice black wool suit that looked good on his slim frame. A lock of hair fell across his eyes as they walked on. So charming, thought Molly. Adorable really. Although maybe a little giddy for a funeral?

Through the gate and under the inscription, the three joined the cluster of people near the grave. Four men broke away from the group and went back to the hearse, lifted the casket, and walked back with Madame Desrosiers. The casket was ornately carved, a work of art that Molly couldn’t help thinking was a shame to put in a grave. She was surprised to see that the casket was going in the ground and not being laid to rest in one of the mausoleums scattered about the cemetery, since from all accounts Madame Desrosiers had been a woman of means.

Rémy caught her eye and nodded. A blush crept up her neck, although their one date months ago had fizzled. She looked as closely as she could at the other mourners without staring. Michel and Adèle’s mother was there, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. Her hair was scraped back into an unadorned ponytail, an unflattering hairstyle that was too severe. A couple of faces looked familiar from around Castillac, but she did not know their names or who they were.

When the priest began to speak, Molly observed the others. The dark-haired young woman buried her head in her husband’s neck, and he glowered at the priest and then at the casket.

Michel and Adèle, on the other hand…the emotion Molly picked up from them was all lightness, relief, even joy. Michel especially.

If you murdered someone, Molly was thinking, would you go to the funeral, if the person was someone you knew? She looked at each mourner in turn, trying to see some truth in their faces or the way they held themselves. At first she thought certainly yes, and then she thought perhaps it would feel like a trap, that going to the funeral would be exactly what a detective would expect and be waiting there with handcuffs.

She shook her head to brush such thoughts away. Really, sometimes her imagination got the best of her and she acted like she was living in an episode of Law & Order: En France. Heart attack makes the most sense. It was most certainly a heart attack.

Absolutely.